...offensives by Malian and foreign military forces are beginning to gain pace in north and central Mali. On Saturday French foreign minister Laurent Fabius called for a faster deployment of other African forces, before a meeting of African leaders in Ivory Coast. Around 5,000 African soldiers are expected to join the French forces in Mali. So far several hundred Nigerian and Togolese troops have arrived.

But analysts link the war in Mali and the kidnapping crisis in Algeria, and predict a possible terror threat throughout the west African sub-region, where a tradition of religious tolerance and lack of security makes many cities soft targets.

"This situation is going to get messy and stay messy," said Andrew Lebovich, a Dakar-based researcher on the Sahel and north Africa region. "I don't know if there will be a wave of attacks in west Africa, but I do think that what just happened in Algeria is a sign...."

In Mali....[t]he traditionally nomadic Tuareg population, many of whom are among the hundreds of thousands of refugees sheltering in neighbouring countries, have been singled out for reprisal attacks. Amnesty says that it has evidence of extrajudicial killings of Tuareg civilians, indiscriminate shelling of a Tuareg nomadic camp and the killing of livestock, on which the nomadic population rely for survival.

Relations with Mali's Tuaregs  estimated to comprise between 3% and 10% of the population  have been in crisis since Tuareg separatists were accused of killing Malian soldiers last year in the northern town of Aguelhok, one of the factors sparking the 22 March coup.

The resulting power vacuum in Bamako then led to a Tuaregled offensive, which resulted in northern Mali first falling under Tuareg control, then under the Islamists, splitting the nation.

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